


Rise Up With The Sun

by quodthey



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Worried Parent Bruce Wayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 02:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19053271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/pseuds/quodthey
Summary: His son came home on a Wednesday evening and Bruce did not call for the slaughter of the fattened calf but it was a close thing.





	Rise Up With The Sun

His son came home on a Wednesday evening and Bruce did not call for the slaughter of the fattened calf but it was a close thing.

“Jason,” he said. The boy—no longer twelve and scrawny, nor fifteen and gangly, but tall and broad-shouldered and strong like Bruce had hoped for him—was in his kitchen, a plate of food being shovelled into him as quickly as he could manage, and for a split second it was like Bruce had stepped back in time, had taken a step sideways into a world where this was what he had come home to for five years. 

There was a tiny fragile balloon in his chest labelled _hope_ that swelled every time he saw the boy. He did not begin to hope that the balloon would not burst tonight. 

The closer he got to Jason the more he noticed: the dust in his hair, a slice across his cheek, glass embedded in his jacket.

“Hey, Bruce,” Jason said, glancing up at him before returning to his plate. The balloon swelled until it was fit to burst. There hadn’t been any guns or knives drawn, and he hadn’t turned away immediately. He swallowed, laid his knife and fork across the plate like Alfred had drilled him, and then turned back to Bruce. “Mind if I crash here for a day or two?” 

The balloon deflated a little but it didn’t show on Bruce’s face, mild as ever. “What happened,” he said, heart beating a tattoo against his sternum. 

Jason looked over his shoulder, then back at him. “Not much,” he said. “Just someone bombed all my safehouses.” 

Bruce could see Jason in front of him, close enough now that he could reach out and touch him, hold him close and never let him go again, but still his heart was going to beat out of his chest. He breathed, slow and deep. “What.” 

“Not a big deal, B,” he said, annoyance growing on his face. He glanced down at his food. “I’m dealing with it. Can I stay or not?”

Dick had left when he was younger than Jason now, and Bruce could recall their arguments, the explosions, the glacial chill. He didn’t think Dick had ever doubted that he could return when he pleased, didn’t doubt that Dick knew he always had a bed in his father’s home. 

“You know where your room is.” And he clapped Jason on the shoulder, smiled a little, and left him to get settled. 

\--

A week later saw Jason still glaring at him and everyone in his vicinity, and insisting that he was “handling it.” A single bag had been unpacked into his old bedroom, and reportedly he had taken to cooking with Alfred in the kitchen. Bruce didn’t go to the kitchen again, but he sat with his books in the library instead of secreting them away to read alone, and when Jason came and sat and read, they remained sitting in silence, and neither of them left. 

In his office, sunlight leaked in through tall windows, and there was a photo of Jason on his desk, angled to avoid damage from the light. In the library, Jason curled up in front of a roaring fire, cat-like and silent. 

His son was making steady work through the collection of French literature, and Bruce was working his own way through an old pile of Christie novels. He would read them to Jason when he was sick as a child, both of them working together to unravel mysteries as they lay across the bed. 

He turned the page, and focused on the words and not on the way Jason, sick and exhausted and tired of not being able to run about rooftops with him, would snatch the books from his hands to go over a passage for himself, adding it to a file of evidence in his head. 

Jason sighed, and stretched out his legs, and Bruce, face hidden behind his book, found a new definition for joy. 

“Father,” Damian said, throwing open the library door. “You must have someone see to the heating; this is growing intolerable.” 

Bruce sighed and looked up from his book, still seeing words layered over the air when he blinked. “There’s nothing wrong with the heating.”

Damian scowled. “The manor is cold.” 

“The place is fine,” Jason said, lounging in his regular chair in a t-shirt, reaching for the sandwich on the table next to him. Damian was wearing a jacket indoors. “Last place I was at, you’d have a pile of blankets and be right up against the heater and still be frozen. Now _that_ was cold.” He took a bite from the sandwich. 

Damian’s eyes narrowed in on it. “That,” he declared, “was _mine_.” And he lunged, because Bruce was never allowed to have a peaceful day. 

Jason stuffed more of the sandwich into his mouth as he rolled back off the chair and dodged the incoming attacks. Bruce could feel a headache coming on.

“Jason,” he said wearily. “Don’t steal your brother’s food.” Before Damian could grow too filled with righteousness over the victory he added, “And Damian, we’ve talk about this—don’t attack before using your words.” 

Unrepentant and undefeated, Jason adopted a moue of disappointment, and Bruce stared at him as he withdrew a bar of chocolate from his pocket, raising it high. Experience told him that look on Jason’s face meant nothing good. “Does that mean I should give this back?” 

By Damian’s indignant howls, his instincts had been right. 

Damian once again reached for him, small hand clasping around forearm to bring it closer—to break or bite, either one was an option these days. But Damian squawked and let go of him almost immediately. 

“You’re _freezing_ ,” he accused, rubbing his hands together. Jason stared at him, bewildered. 

“No?” he said. “We just talked about this, do you need your head checked or something? Do you have a concussion?” 

“I am not the one who is so _oblivious_ he does not realise when he is cold.” 

“Jeez,” Jason said, shrugging Damian off him. “If you’re that worked up about it, I’ll put a sweater on, or something.” He rolled his eyes at Bruce, conspiratorial, and Bruce wondered if Jason owned any sweaters. Idly, he took in Jason’s measurements, recalling his favourite colours. 

Jason, noting his attention, narrowed his eyes. Damian scoffed, and turned to leave, already calling for Titus. 

Bruce turned back to the book as Jason sat opposite him, and neither of them said anything.

\--

He played the footage, then rewound it and played it again. He played it from another camera, and then another, just to be sure. 

No sound, but there was the explosion, and there was Jason protecting himself from the spray of glass and dust—so close to the blast that his ears would have been ringing, because there was no other reason Bruce could think of for him not to have noticed the people behind him. 

Black Mask’s people, because Black Mask blew up Jason’s houses, because Black Mask was trying to kill his son. 

Upstairs, Alfred had commandeered Jason into having tea with him, and someone wanted him dead; Jason, curled up in that armchair, deep and wide and close to the fire, reading—and someone was planning his murder. Again. Someone was trying to kill him again. 

He played the footage and watched them argue, watched the bats come out and the fists and the guns and it was on the screen, large and high definition, but all Bruce could see was the fallen warehouse Jason had been in, and the bricks he had cleared off his body, and the cuts on his face from a beating and the explosion, always the explosion. 

“What did you do,” he said. Jason’s reflection stared down at him in the monitor. 

“What do you mean _what did I do_ , and the hell is this?” he asked, throwing an arm out at the screen. “Still spying on me?” 

“Keeping an eye on you is not spying,” Bruce said. He didn’t turn around. “Not when you’re starting wars with the Black Mask.” 

Jason stomped closer to him, and Bruce didn’t resist his anger, let him swing the chair around. 

“I didn’t _start_ fricking anything!” 

“Of course. Black Mask took exception to your existence and decided to kill you for no reason at all.” 

Jason’s pale skin flushed with anger. “I am _dealing with it_ , so there’s no need for you to get your pointy little ears involved.” 

“And my eyes?” Bruce asked. “Am I to stop using them, as well?”

“No,” Jason snarled. “But maybe you should get them checked.” Bruce could almost hear him grinding his teeth, jaw tense and hands curling into fists at his sides, but he jerked his head away and breathed in deep and on the exhale, pushed his hands out, palms flat against his jeans. 

“I,” he started in a curiously calm and detached voice, eyes closed, “did not start anything. I was disrupting his plans. Because his plans started to involve children. And before you ask, no,” he said. “I didn’t kill anyone.” 

Bruce noted the way Jason held himself and the way he breathed so carefully, timing the breaths—he was struck by the familiarity, and then by the realisation: how similar it was to his own way of grappling with the blinding rage that lived in his chest. He could smell the chamomile tea from Alfred’s cupboards, and a tendril of pride unfurled in his chest, undeserved though it was. Beginnings came in all forms. He nodded. 

“I am dealing with it,” Jason said firmly. 

“I… could help.” The words were awkward in his mouth, clumsy and unpracticed but he wanted—he wanted many things. To turn back the clock, the calendar, to go back to sitting with Jason at the table, helping him with his science project. To read to him when he was sick. To fit him under his chin and hold him close, the curls tickling his nose as he bent to kiss his son’s head. But he couldn’t do that. But he could help. 

Jason shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is mine.” 

Beginnings came in all forms, Bruce reminded himself, and he turned the chair around. His fingers hovered over the keys, but he could see Jason’s face, closed and distant, so he backspaced through the files he had gathered, and deleted them. The tapes played over and over in his mind, warping and transforming into what he knew would become his nightmares. But the boy standing behind him was proof against those distortions, and that little balloon, so small and fragile, found new life. 

“Good luck,” he offered, and Jason met his eyes in the black of the screen, and left. 

\--

They didn’t speak about it again, but Jason didn’t leave the library so Bruce counted it was a win. 

“You’ve been on that page for ten minutes, old man,” Jason said. “Need some glasses?” 

Bruce tensed, and relaxed. He looked at the page and didn’t recognise a word of it—he’d been listening, rather than reading. Jason’s slow breathing, the creak of his chair as he moved, small sighs as he found ways to sit that were kinder on his slouched back and crossed legs. 

“I’m just enjoying it,” he said, and even as they fell back into silence, he put his book down. 

He looked across at Jason, legs folded up so he could sit sideways, book resting on his legs. His face was pale, and Bruce frowned. 

“You’re inside a lot these days,” he said. “When was the last time you saw the sun?”

Jason scoffed. “Just because you can laze in the lap of luxury all day doesn’t mean the rest of us can,” he said without looking up. “I go outside plenty.” 

“You seem paler,” Bruce said. “Like you haven’t been outside.” 

Jason did look up at that, quirked an eyebrow. “What, forgotten my face already?” he asked. “Don’t worry, there are enough people in this house who look like me that you’ll remember soon enough.” 

Bruce did not grasp at straws to be able to have a conversation with his son. “Alfred said he was going to make plum cake,” he offered into the void. It hung there for a moment, a lifeline between them, before Jason took it. 

“No sane person turns down Alfred’s food,” he said, smiling slightly. 

“So I will see you at dinner?” 

“Bruce,” Jason said, teasing. “Are you trying to say you miss me?” 

_I used to read my books to your photo,_ he didn’t say. _I forgot how to breathe when I wasn’t saying your name._

“I’ll see you at dinner,” Bruce told him. “Don’t disappoint Alfred.” 

But that night, after dinner and conversation and Jason sitting there with his family, where he should have been always, Alfred passes around slices of cake and when Jason cuts into his, he instantly pushes the plate away from him so quickly it slides halfway across the table.

“Oh, _gross_ ,” Tim said. “I’m not hungry anymore, actually.” 

Bruce looked down at his own dessert. It was, as far as he could tell, perfectly fine. 

But there on Jason’s fork was not a bite of excellent cake, but something decayed. Pale maggots squirmed among the crumbs. 

He pushed his plate away. 

“I—” Alfred stared at it. “Quite honestly, I don’t have the faintest idea what happened.” 

The next night, Jason didn’t come to dinner.

\--

Really, the explosion should have been expected, but he had enjoyed the peace while it had lasted. 

“I should be going with you, Father,” Damian insisted, even as Alfred guided him away. 

Bruce didn’t look up as he checked his belt and pulled his cowl down. “I can handle it myself,” he said. “You have an injury and shouldn’t be up. Go to bed.” 

Damian harrumphed and scowled but dropped his protests. Above his head, Alfred’s face was a novel of threats and concern. 

“Have a good evening, sir,” he said mildly. 

“We’ll be back soon,” Bruce told him, and got in his car. 

In the end, it wasn’t difficult to find him. He and Jason had very different ideas about what “handling it” meant. 

Exhibit A would be the bombs. Exhibit B, the shoot-out. 

Bruce thought about those quiet afternoons in the library. The roaring fire. The new beginning. Against metal and grey concrete, flames licked up into the sky. He remembered Jason curling toward that little fire, and he drove faster. 

The buildings had long since been marked on his own maps as belonging to Black Mask and his burgeoning empire. He had plans to deal with it. Many plans. 

“ _I can deal with it_ ,” he muttered under his breath. “He’s never dealing with anything again.” 

He took a sharp left and people who had been working in neighboring buildings not too long ago dove out of the way as they ran, chaos behind them and ahead of them. Abandoning his car, he forced his way through them, the black of his cape working through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. 

Batman stared in the direction from which they were fleeing. A window blew out. He growled. A man threw himself across the street to avoid him. 

“Hey,” a familiar voice snapped. “Watch it.” 

The glint of a gun in the dark, the tang of copper in the air. 

Jason wasn’t dressed as the Red Hood with that ridiculous helmet but with just a domino mask splashed across his face, as if that could ever hide him from Bruce. 

The man who had stumbled into him was tall and thin and weighed almost nothing as Bruce gripped him and pushed him in the other direction. 

“What did you do,” he said lowly, advancing. 

“My best,” Jason replied, smiling wide, baring his teeth. Bruce snarled and pushed forward. He gritted his teeth at his son’s lack of concern—the arrogance of the boy, who had thrown away everything Bruce had ever taught him, who had thrown off the hand that had guided him so carefully. 

“How many,” he asked. “How many people did you kill.” 

Jason shoved at him, hands tangling in the edges of the cape, and refused to meet his eye. “Let me go,” he bit out. “Get _off_.” 

_“Tell me.”_

Jason’s face spasmed as his breathing stuttered. “Why?” he asked, face turned away. “You’ve already made up your mind.” He groaned, but what was on his face the most wasn’t pain, but that mix of indignation and embarrassment Bruce had seen every time he’d needed help as a child—embarrassment at being here: weak and vulnerable and pinned, animal instincts rising to the top.

But Bruce smelled blood on the air, and Jason wasn’t fighting him, and his stomach was lead dragging him to the bottom of the harbor. He dropped a hand from Jason’s chest to his side, and his hand moved with a sick slickness. Jason couldn’t see Bruce’s closed eyes behind the white lenses of the cowl, but he would be able to feel the sagging shoulders, the weight dropping against him. 

“Hood,” he breathed. He was careful with his breathing, with his words. If he was careful like that, he wasn’t panicking. “Red Hood, what happened?” 

Jason laughed, an edge of hysteria rising in his voice. “Now you care? Now?” he struggled against Bruce, pushing at him. “I can deal with it myself.” 

“I think we both know how well you deal with things _by yourself_ ,” Bruce said, hand pressing firmly against the wound. “We will deal with this at home.” 

A sneer, this time. “Yeah, that’ll go down so well,” Jason said, before dropping his voice to a mocking imitation of Batman’s own. “Don’t worry, A, I might have convinced myself he’s killed a bunch more people but this way I can satisfy my need to be a hero—” he wheezed, head dropping back, and he tried to catch his breath. 

“Easy,” Bruce murmured. 

“Fuck you,” Jason said, not looking at him. 

Bruce guided him forward, grasping his arm and securing Jason against him. “You can hate me,” he said evenly, “when you are not bleeding.” 

Jason grumbled to himself as they walked slowly down the empty road. “I don’t need your help,” he said eventually. 

“Unfortunately, you have it anyway.” He was silent for a moment. “That wasn’t your bomb.” 

Weak, wet laughter. “And I wondered why they call you the World’s Greatest Detective,” Jason said. “Will wonders never cease, you did it, you solved the case.” 

Bruce said nothing. Minefield after minefield. He thought about those chairs huddled so close to the fireplace. The easy silence they’d had. The sound of Jason breathing, the creak of his chair, the rustle of pages. He could feel the loss of it already, could feel a thousand of those pages cutting into him. 

The car, he was pleased to note, retained all its wheels and functionality. Sometimes in Gotham he had to be thankful for the small things. “Later,” he said, unlocking it. “We will discuss this, and why he tried to kill you. Again.” 

“‘S _mine_ ,” Jason slurred, collapsing into the seat where Bruce put him. He tried to push himself forward and likely fall out of the door, but Bruce grabbed his collar and pulled him back. “I already _told_ you.”

“No,” he said, flatly. “You had your chance and now you’re bleeding in my car.”

“Like you’ve never bled in it yourself,” Jason sneered. 

“It’s my car.” 

“Hypocrite,” Jason muttered, eyes sliding shut. 

Bruce reached over, nudged him awake. “You can’t sleep yet, Jay,” he said. “Open your eyes. Tell me something.” 

“Sure,” Jason said, eyes still closed. “I can tell you that you’re an ass.” 

“You could,” Bruce said, with the ghost of a smile. “Or you could tell me about what you were reading. It’s been a while since I looked at the French section.” 

They were nearly five minutes away from the manor when Jason stopped talking again. 

\--

Alfred stared at him disapprovingly as he moved Jason from the car to a bed, bandages pressed tight against his side. 

“I take it everything went to plan?” he asked. Bruce didn’t reply, but as they worked in silence, he could feel Alfred’s presence become increasingly frosty, even as his hands remained gentle and warm. When Jason was stitched and hooked up to more wires than Bruce wanted to see run into any of his children, Alfred stood for a moment, but left in silence. 

He was checking Jason’s vitals when he noticed it, that there was something about this that was too familiar and then: the stillness. Ice gripped him and iron shoved its way so far down his throat he couldn’t breathe around it, he couldn’t do anything until he grabbed Jason’s wrist and checked his pulse and put two fingers to the side of his throat and—steady, a solid steady beat. Clark could hear a man’s heart beat from another city. Sometimes Bruce envied him that. 

He pressed a hand against Jason’s chest, and he was beneath a hot sun, cradling a child in his arms, and he was so still, he was so unnaturally still. 

Fingers wrapped around his wrist, weakly tried to push him away. “Ngh,” Jason grunted, trying to roll over. “Go away, B.”

“You weren’t breathing,” he said quietly. 

Jason made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Course I was,” he mumbled. “I was just sleeping.” 

“You weren’t breathing,” Bruce repeated. His hand was still pressed to Jason’s chest but he could feel it now, the rise and fall, the expansion and deflation. He could still feel how still he had been. So cool. He could feel it beneath his hands every day, but he had felt it. 

“You’re going crazy,” Jason said. “Get some sleep, old man. Let me get mine.” 

He pushed at his hand again, so Bruce let him win, and fell back into the chair at Jason’s bedside. 

He picked his book up from where he had dropped it, and quietly read _Crooked House_ aloud until Jason’s breath evened out, and watched as his chest fell still once more.


End file.
